swift Capturing Self with Swift 4.2 Swift blocks are an increasingly common way of providing _callback_ type behavior to asynchronous functions. Swift 4.2 introduced an interesting change recently, but first let's take a step back and review what "capturing" means.
podcast Introducing - appDevDiary, a Podcast I'm teaming up with my friend Joe Cieplinski (fellow musician and app developer) to build an app for guitarists. We're documenting our journey in a new podcast.
swift Functional Refactoring in Swift Here's an example I came across recently where I wanted to clean up some imperative code and explore a functional approach to the same algorithm.
swift Codable Improvements in Swift 4.1 In Swift 4.1 Apple has addressed a common point of customization with the new keyDecodingStrategy on JSONDecoder.
speaking dotSwift Paris 2018 I just returned from a trip to Paris for the dotSwift conference. Since this is my third trip to Paris, I wanted to see a few things that I had missed in my previous trips.
iOS Hidden AVFoundation Gem I've probably written aspect ratio code a hundred times. Each time I approach the topic, I write a quick and dirty implementation, get it wrong, debug it with pencil & paper, and then
apple Apple Needs Better FaceTime Cameras for the Mac But as the iPhone has led the pack in camera optics and technology in a small package, none of that love has made it back to the Mac.
iOS Jerky Scrolling with UIRefreshControl + UITableView While recording an episode for NSScreencast, in which I reload rows of a UITableView while scrolling, I noticed that the scrolling acceleration would screech to a halt.
swift Ultimate Guide to JSON Parsing with Swift 4 Swift 4 and Foundation has finally answered the question of how to parse JSON with Swift.
iOS The Effect of Primetime Media Coverage In I talked about how I helped launch the 5 Calls iOS app. Shortly after this hit the store, Michael Moore (yes, that Michael Moore) ...
5 Calls I have become much more political in the last year than I ever have before. Like many, completely dumbstruck by the outcome of the election, I have been struggling with how best to
recording An Affordable Dynamic Mic Recommendation I often get asked what mic people should use when getting started screencasting. Since screencasting is a significant part of my business, I am comfortable spending a little more than a hobbyist to get good quality sound. Pictured above you can see my microphone and audio interface.
iOS Background Downloads In the previous post I wrote about how I designed the download system for the NSScreencast iOS app. There's no need to have the user be forced to keep our app in the foreground while the download is in progress, we naturally want to support background downloads.
iOS Designing a Robust Large File Download System For the NSScreencast iOS app I wanted to support downloading videos for offline use. With each video being between 80-200 MB in size, this requires some attention to create a download system that is resilient to failure.
iOS Resume Data Broken in iOS 10 Downloading files on iOS is fairly straight forward. You configure a URLSession with a URLSessionConfiguration, create a URLSessionDownloadTask with the URL that you want to download, and then call .resume() on it. Later
iOS Nibs are Cool Again I’m working on a client project that has a pretty large legacy codebase. For some new features I’m working inside of an existing architecture, so I’m using a when-in-rome strategy
iOS Exporting Devices with Spaceship One of my clients is submitting an app to the store under a different Apple Developer account than it was developed with. This left us with about 50 devices in the old portal
gaming SteelSeries Nimbus Controller If you’ve tried playing any games with the Siri Remote, you’ve probably noticed how awkward the situation is. There are some games that lend themselves to such an input device (such
tvOS Painless Authentication on Apple TV The primary input mechanism for Apple TV text entry is a single thumb on a tiny trackpad. Needless to say, entering text is a nuissance. Entering complex passwords is downright painful. So painful,
tvOS Say Hello to NSScreencast TV I'm proud to announce that NSScreencast is now available on your Apple TV! You can browse all the screencasts straight from your couch, using adaptive quality streaming up to 1080p HD. Free episodes
tvOS NSScreencast + tvOS I'm excited for tvOS. I'm excited both as a consumer and as a developer, particularly because NSScreencast is a great candidate for a tv app. I knew I was going to build an
business What is your superpower? I'm sitting at the airport in Indianapolis, thinking about the conversations and connections I made at Release Notes. One of my favorites was a talk by _David Smith where he posed 2 questions:
swift Swift 2 will be Open Source Apple announced yesterday at WWDC that Swift 2 will be open-sourced later in 2015. This is fantastic news. Not only are they releasing the source, but it will be released under a permissive-license.
The Cobbler’s Children Have No Websites ...or something like that. I find it amusing how true the old adage is: The cobbler’s children have no shoes. Which of course refers to the fact that busy professionals often produce